082 – Friction or Flow, How does your team roll?

The secret to creating real teamwork

Is your team working well? You know the answer immediately. But figuring out why some groups of people work well together while others don’t can be a mysterious thing. My guest is week is team expert, author and speaker Dermot Crowley. At the heart of his work is a really powerful concept. Teams are either in a state of Friction or flow.

Just on hearing those words many of you listening will instantly know where your team is at. Do things move along smoothly? Are you sharing information? Are you collaborating? Or does your team suffer the jolting symptoms of friction, bumps large and small, that so often are created by the team itself. That can make progress hard, communication ineffective and the culture tired…or worse, toxic.

In this conversation you’ll l hear Dermott describe what it means to be in a state or flow. And the things we can do to move from a state of friction.

Lessons Learned

Bad teams share one thing

There is a universal trait of all struggling teams. It’s the way the individuals feel they are so busy and their work is so hard. There is an intense time pressure and an overwhelming sense that everything is on fire. That mentality, one I encounter constantly in the work that I do, is a tragedy. A real, living tragedy for the human beings that have to spend their working life in that environment. And as Dermott pointed out – so often, the culture of dreary panic is a reflection of the leadership itself.

No one means to cause friction

Friction is the collateral damage of everyone in an organisation going a million miles an hour. There is so much pressure put on people in complex organizations that looking out for others is an afterthought. The way out of this situation is for everyone to recognize that each person is creating friction for others. That simple recognition will help people to ease that tension.

Real collaboration

Too often workers are asked to manage projects despite never having been trained as project manager. People need a simple way to break the work down and make it visible to everyone on the team. Don’t just keep the plan in one person’s head.